Camp Opens Soon. Minnesota Still Can't Account for Its Own Roster.

Nine weeks into the offseason and the injury cluster that has defined Minnesota's summer shows no sign of clearing. Charlie Stramel remains out as of the latest update, and the broader group — Gustavsson, Brodin, Bogosian, Eriksson Ek — has been sidelined since late June without a clean return timeline in sight. That's a starting goaltender, two experienced defensemen, and a center who logged nearly 20 minutes a night last season, all unaccounted for with training camp weeks away.

The math here isn't complicated. Joel Eriksson Ek is the kind of two-way center that holds a middle-six together; without him, Minnesota's depth down the middle was already thin before the injury, and it hasn't been replenished. Gustavsson's absence has been the loudest problem all summer — I noted it when Petersen left for Washington on a PTO, and nothing has changed since. Jesper Wallstedt is a genuine prospect, but asking him to carry the position into October because the starter hasn't practiced in two months is a different conversation than projecting his ceiling.

The Coleman and Maatta additions from Calgary were real moves, and Brock Faber's emergence gives the blue line a genuine anchor. But depth additions don't absorb a four-player absence at camp. At some point the question stops being whether the roster is constructed well enough and starts being whether it can simply dress itself.